I love my home and I love my meat!

I have my own apartment!!! I'm seriously ecstatic over this little place, it's so awesome. Don't get me wrong, it's still freakishly small, but it's very new and modern and bright and mine! I thought I might be afraid to live out here on my own, but so far I'm really loving it(I'm counting the Weekly Mansion as part of that statement). Yes, living alone can be lonely, but I spend so much time around people at work that it's nice to just have some time to relax and be somewhere private. I went out today and bought some apartment essentials from the 100 yen shop... I'm really starting to worship that store. It's like a dollar store, but on crack, and I am totally addicted. It's truly got just about anything you could possibly want, all for 100 yen, which converts to roughly a dollar. I bought toilet paper, a trash can, tea lights (it's the closest I could come to Hannukah candles), an alarm clock... the list goes on. The only bad part was schlepping all the stuff I bought back to my apartment, but I figure I could use the exercise. Luckily, I'll be getting a little exercise every day since my apartment is about a 10-15 minute walk from my school. The walk, by the way, is wonderful. I live about 1/4 of a mile from a really lovely park with lots of trees and a big fountain in the center and I get to walk through it on my way to work everyday! It's an especially nice walk now because autumn is actually just hitting Tokyo at the moment, so all the trees' leaves are turning yellow and blowing around in the air. I love the fall, but I never thought I'd get to experience it twice in one year!

Now I'm sure some of you are wondering about the date I mentioned, so I will follow up on that a little bit. The guy I went out with, Hiro, was very nice and interesting. We went to a traditional Japanese style bar, but by American standards it was a restaurant. The bar was very nice and big, it had three different floors! We were seated at a sort of secluded booth on the third floor and every table had a little touch screen that you could place your orders on... it was very futuristic. We had some food and drinks and just talked for a while and it was fun. I don't know if I'm going to pursue anything beyond friendship with him, but either way, a friend is a good thing to have. Especially a Japanese friend! We're going to meet up again at some point and I'm going to do my best to show him around my neighborhood, Shintakashimadaira, (try saying that 5 times fast) since he's not familiar with the area.

I also went out last night with my co-workers to... god, I can't remember what it's called in Japanese... but it's a sort of Japanese BBQ where you get to cook your own meat. OH MY GOSH, it was sooooo delicious. We ate and ate and ate, and I totally could have eaten more! Man, I really do love meat.